The following is how Engels confirms the place of our first
“classic” book as the original work of Marxism. “The German Ideology”
at that point (1886) had not yet been saved from “the gnawing criticism of the
mice”. It was not published until 1932.

“In the preface to A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy, published in Berlin, 1859, Karl Marx relates how
the two of us in Brussels in the year 1845 set about: “to work out in common
the opposition of our view” — the materialist conception of history which was
elaborated mainly by Marx — to the ideological view of German philosophy, in
fact, to settle accounts with our erstwhile philosophical conscience. The
resolve was carried out in the form of a criticism of post-Hegelian philosophy.
The manuscript, two large octavo volumes, had long reached its place of
publication in Westphalia when we received the news that altered circumstances
did not allow of its being printed. We abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing
criticism of the mice all the more willingly as we had achieved our main
purpose — self-clarification! Since then more than 40 years have elapsed and
Marx died without either of us having had an opportunity of returning to the
subject.”

“Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German
Philosophy” is in four parts, of which the first is nominally about George William Frederick
Hegel (1770-1831).

In “Ludwig Feuerbach, Part 1” Engels says that the
revolutions of 1789 and 1848 were each preceded by uproar in the field of
philosophy; but with differences.

Whereas the French pre-revolutionary philosophers had been
banned and proscribed, Hegel had advanced in “a triumphant procession which lasted for decades”. At times Hegelianism
had held “the rank of a royal Prussian
philosophy of state”. In the decade following Hegel’s death, until the
denunciatory lectures of Schelling in 1841 which Engels attended, “‘Hegelianism’ reigned most exclusively.”
This reign, and the subsequent fall, was the well-ploughed philosophical ground
in which Marxism germinated and started to grow.

Engels says: “At that
time politics was a very thorny field, and hence the main fight came to be
directed against religion; this fight, particularly since 1840, was indirectly
also political.”

This proxy role played in politics by religion (and
philosophy) in 1840s Germany is the reason for the apparent elevation of the
dichotomy of idealism and materialism, as if this dichotomy explains
everything, when by itself it explains nothing. The relationship of (thinking)
Subject and (material) Object is dialectical, and not absolute.

Lenin wrote: “It is
impossible completely to understand Marx's Capital, and especially its first
chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's
Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood
Marx!!”

So Hegel was much more than a John the Baptist to Karl
Marx’s Christ. Hegel had gathered up everything that had gone before, and
displayed it as unified history. Hegel made the methodology that served as
Marx’s constant framework.

Engels writes:

“… with Hegel
philosophy comes to an end; on the one hand, because in his system he summed up
its whole development in the most splendid fashion; and on the other hand,
because, even though unconsciously, he showed us the way out of the labyrinth
of systems to real positive knowledge of the world.”

The third linked item is a return to Engels’ Ludwig
Feuerbach, in its fourth and final part, dealing with Engels’ now-deceased
friend Karl Marx. Engels writes:

“Out of the
dissolution of the Hegelian school, however, there developed still another
tendency, the only one which has borne real fruit. And this tendency is
essentially connected with the name of Marx (1).

“The separation from
Hegelian philosophy was here also the result of a return to the materialist
standpoint. That means it was resolved to comprehend the real world — nature
and history — just as it presents itself to everyone who approaches it free
from preconceived idealist crotchets. It was decided mercilessly to sacrifice
every idealist fancy which could not be brought into harmony with the facts conceived
in their own and not in a fantastic interconnection. And materialism means nothing more than this.”

Materialism, covered in the second and third parts of this
work, was crucial to Marx’s theories.

Materialism gazed mercilessly at the objective universe from
the point of view of the free individual human being.

But materialism did not amount to an elevation of the
material universe to the status of a “prime mover” God, progenitor of life and
breather of spirit into man. Materialism means nothing more than reality, as
opposed to fantasy; that is reality - seen by the human Subject.

The remainder of Part 4 of “Ludwig Feuerbach” becomes one of
those grand sweeping overviews of which both Engels and Marx were capable. In
this case science, philosophy and class politics are interwoven in an
undoubtedly dialectical way.

The above is to introduce the
original reading-text:Feuerbach and the end of German
Philosophy, 1886, Engels, Part 1 and Part 2.